Game industry figures come out against Trump’s Muslim ban

Evil Dictators, oppressive laws, a Nazis resurgence and self-crippling economies are usually left in scripts that have been scrunched up and thrown in a bin because, as stories go, they’re too unrealistic – even for videogames. Yet here we are. The idea of Nazis being bad is now a “controversial” idea.

They say every cloud has a silver lining, and in this particular case – Trump banning Muslims from entering if they’re from a country he doesn’t have business ties with – it’s decent human beings showing solidarity for Muslims who are being persecuted for ignorant and hateful reasons (they aren’t Christians and they aren’t white). Many individuals, both developers and business-types, from the industry have lent some words of support. Most of this is via Twitter or employer emails and quite unsurprisingly not on company twitter accounts, where it might be seen as “wahhhh! bringing politics into videogames”.

There’s already lots of posts collating these, so here’s a choice few links and some tweets that’ll hopefully restore a little bit of faith in humanity for you. VentureBeat, Mashable, ArsTechnica and Polygon. And finally a piece on being a Muslim Game Developer over at the Guardian, written by Rami Ismail, who is one of the driving forces behind his company Vlambeer as well as being a crucial figure in the indie games industry.

GDC is a global community – we’re horrified by the #MuslimBan. Of course we’ll refund affected attendees, and keep fighting for inclusivity.

Written by Sean P

I enjoy playing games and I enjoy writing things, so I decided to combine the two. I do bits here and there and have a twitter that mainly just announces things I've done as my life revolves around very little that is truly interesting.